Institutions Can Change the Meaning of Tests to Promote Instead of Undermine Belonging in School

• In Event: Connecting Research on Belonging and Motivation: Investigating the Interplay Between Contextual, Individual, and Institutional Factors

Abstract

Theoretical Perspective/Objective
High-stakes exams are stressful for students and consequential for their academic trajectories (Rozek et al., 2019). Although one purpose of exams is to show how much students have learned and grown over a period of time, the dominant cultural narrative about exams has expanded such that a poor exam score has taken on a greater meaning for students. For many students, failing an exam does not just mean a student has not mastered the material. Instead, doing poorly on an exam is taken to mean that the students themselves are failures.
We hypothesized that exam feedback (and the sense of academic competence it confers) has become a key factor that affects students’ sense of school belonging (Walton & Brady, 2017). If students begin to view themselves as failures in school because of low exam scores, we propose that they will also begin to question their sense of belonging. We partnered with the College Board, which administers Advanced Placement exams to high schoolers across the nation, to experimentally test this hypothesis.

Method/Results
Our study involved 1,068 high school students who took Advanced Placement (AP) courses and received a score of 2 or lower on their exams. AP courses allow high school students to receive college credit if they receive high enough exam scores. Typically, receiving a score of 2 or lower on their exams means that students do not qualify for college credit and is viewed as a failure by students. After selection for the study, students were randomized to control or reframing intervention conditions. In the reframing intervention, students received information that put their exam scores in the context of growth and learning and students were given a chance to reflect on that experience whereas control group students were given neutral materials about the exam.
We assessed intervention effects on students’ emotional responses to receiving a low exam score as well as their sense of high school belonging and anticipated college belonging. First, we found that the reframing intervention increased students’ positive emotions after receiving their exam score, F(1,1066)=40.44, p<0.001, and did not affect their negative emotions, F(1,1066)=1.77, p=0.18 (Figure-1). Control group students felt more negative than positive emotions, t(560)=7.44, p<0.001, suggesting that without intervention, students feel significantly more negatively than positively after receiving a low exam score. By contrast, intervention group students reported feeling similar levels of positive and negative emotions, t(506)=0.57, p=0.57. Thus, intervention group students were not, for instance, less upset upon receiving a low exam score, but the intervention did help them feel more positive (e.g., determined) in a way that may help them cope and rebound.
Second, we examined students’ sense of belonging. We found that the intervention improved students’ high school belonging, F(1,1066)=4.91, p=0.027, and their anticipated belonging in college, F(1,1066)=8.37, p=0.004 (Figure-2).

Significance
These findings highlight how the meaning students place on exam scores is an integral contributor to students’ school belonging. Furthermore, we show that institutions are arbiters of that meaning and can change the meaning in a positive way.

Authors

• Chris Rozek, Washington University in St. Louis
  Presenting Author

• Shannon Brady, Wake Forest University
  Presenting Author

• David Kalkstein, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Gregory Mariotti Walton, Stanford University
  Presenting Author